Early Childhood Education Teacher Stress: Obscured Truths and Tensions of Race

• In Event: Disruption and Deconstruction With Early Childhood Teachers and Teacher Educators

Abstract

The early childhood education (ECE) workforce is important; especially for children contentiously labeled “at risk.” Research demonstrates ECE benefits academic, socioemotional, and executive function development. Yet, ECE teachers contend with teacher and teaching, assessment, and COVID-19 stress, affecting mental/physical well-being and the teacher-child relationship, resulting in teachers resignation rates of 25-30% annually. Part of public discourse, resignations illuminate challenges faced, demonstrating the need to examine obscured truths and tensions, particularly those around race. As such, the current study centered the voices of six Head Start teachers regarding lived experiences. Implementing a sequential mixed-methods design, the study asked how (a) sociodemographic characteristics, (b) stressors with which they contend, and (c) means of abating stress differ between teachers. Implications are discussed.

Author

• Cynthia Arraya Wiltshire, University of Texas - El Paso